Agatha Christie: The Moving Finger (Geraldine McEwan)

Brother and sister Jerry and Joanna Burton seek a refuge to recuperate after a motorcycle accident that left him with two broken legs.  In this interpretation, the accident was self inflicted due to his post war psychological trauma.  This brings them to the peaceful village of Lymstock, but a village that is embroiled in a series of "poison pen" letters that has everybody on edge.  The story opens with the Colonel Appleton  committing suicide after having received such a letter and it is the talk of the town when the pair are invited around for tea and introductions.

(Joan Hickson's version has Jerry as a test pilot whose experimental plane crash landed.  It doesn't include the incident with Colonel Appleton.) 

With the initial introductions over, Mrs Symmington is next discovered murdered  A note, "I can't go on", is found on torn note paper beside her hand, and a poisoned pen letter in the fire grate.  Joanna and Jerry ask Meghan to come stay with them to take away the shock of her mother's death and while staying there a more serious relationship began to develop with Jerry.

Inspector Graves identifies the typewriter used to type the envelopes that the poisoned pen letters are sent in, one found in the Women's Institute and donated by Mr Symmington.   Meanwhile, Mrs Partridge and the maid Agnes have set up a chat for the afternoon, because something doesn't appear quite right to Agnes, but in the end Agnes doesn't show up. Meghan discovers the body of Agnes the next day, this time obviously murdered, no poison pen nonsense.  On the night when Mrs Symmington died, the two maids were supposed to be out, but Agnes came back early (due to a quarrel with her boyfriend).  Apparently, she knew something

By lying in wait, the Inspector observed Aimee Griffith type another envelope on the marked typewriter and arrests Aimee, but Marple doesn't believe she is the murderer.  Instead, she conspires with Megan to attempt to blackmail Megan's stepfather.  Falling for the bait, Mr Symmington drugs and attempts to murder Megan that evening but Marple springs the trap and he is detained by the police.

 

What Really Happened.

There were two authors of the poisoned pen letters, neither was working with the other.  The first was Aimee Griffith, the doctor's sister, who had done a similar thing in Wales where they lived previously.  It was she who wrote that letter to Colonel Appleton, prompting his suicide. That was a genuine event.

The other author, however, was Mr Symmington.  He was using the confusion of the poisoned pen kerfuffle as a cover for killing his own wife.  Taking the idea that the letters would lead to someone actually committing suicide, he wrote several of his own, spreading them about town. Then, he planted one on his wife, after killing her with real poison in her medicine.  

His hope was that the other letter writer would be blamed, as Aimee almost was. It became apparent that the Maid Agnes had actually been home when the letter to his wife was supposed to have been delivered, but she knew that no one had come by the house that day.  So how was this foul letter delivered to the Victim?  It could only have been planted by her master, Richard.   Mr Symmington knew that she would eventually reveal that detail, and so she had to be silenced, which he did with ruthless efficiency.

The motive for all this evil was that Mr. Symmington had fallen in love with his boy's governess, the young and beautiful Elsa Holland.  He simply wanted to be rid of his wife to be able to marry Elsa. 

 

Cast of Characters 

1.  The Energetic Young Woman.  Joanna Burton.  Taking her wayward and obviously troubled brother in hand, determined that he should make a full recovery.

2.  The Efficient Professional.  Aimee is Dr Griffith's sister and manages his medical practice, as well as looks with censure on the moral failings of the village residents.  She also runs the local Brownie troup.

3.  The Batty Eccentric.  While the Reverend Caleb Calthrop is the vicar, he also communicates almost entirely in Latin and is clearly pictured as so otherworldly that he's of no earthly good.  "A being more remote from every day life, I've yet to encounter." as Mr Pye puts it.

 3.5  The Cloud-headed Girl.   Megan Hunter, though an adult of 20 presents herself as if she were 12.  She is socially awkward, rides a bicycle as if she were a child, crashing into people and jumping on beds.  Her father was a criminal who was sent to jail and her mother re-married.

4.  The Doctor.  Doctor Owen Griffith is the local doctor taking care of Jerry's leg injuries, and also enamored with Joanna.

5.  The Lawyer.  Mr. Richard "Dickie" Symmington, the local solicitor.  

6.  The Vicar.  Caleb Calthrop is the actual vicar of the village.

8.  The Policeman.  Inspector Graves.  Soon to be fast friends with Miss Marple.

9.  The Temptrix.  The Symmington's nanny/ governess Miss Elsa Holland.  She, herself, is not overtly flirty, but she attracts the attention of several of the men in the story, including Jerry and, of course, Mr Symmington

10.  The Rake and 11. The Rival.  Both Jerry and Richard are enchanted by the youth and appearance of Elsa Holland, the unwitting Temptrix of the piece.  At the same time, both men house the unfortunate Megan Hunter under their roofs as well.  Ultimately, Jerry behaves honorably to both, and Richard behaves dishonorably to both.

12. The Mirror.  Unexpectedly, we find that Dr Griffith is living with his sister Aimee.  They form a very interesting parallel with Jerry and Joanna, also brother and sister.

13.  The Loving/Lonely Wife.  While Caleb is the batty cleric, his wife Maud Dane-Calthrop is presented as clear-headed and effective in mitigating her husband's eccentricities.  His ministry, and no doubt the parish, would come to absolute ruin without her to guide it.  As Mr. Pye says, "She's not your average vicar's wife. Everyone is ever so slightly afraid of her."

14.  The Housekeeper   Miss Partridge

15.  The Maid.  Agnes, the maid for the Symmingtons.

16.  The Daughter.  The classic Daughter is young, less than 12 years old and there is no appropriately aged character here.  However, Megan is a type of Daughter, having arrested her development at the age when her father was sent to prison, which was about 10 years ago.  If you think of her as an eight year old, many of her behaviors are much more consistent.

17.  The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man.   Mrs Barton, whom the Burtons rented the cottage from when they came to Lymstock.  We spend the early part of the story with her fretting about having to rent her house out, and to quietly resenting Jerry and Joanna.

21.  The Social Outcast.  Mr Pye is a delightful character but obviously presented as outwardly gay, even flirting with Jerry when they stopped by for tea.  He says, "no more hole and corner for me", always living in the shadows, and how he wishes he could come out of them.  "They'll just think you're a little queer." he says of Joanna's stylish makup. "And what, I ask, is wrong with that?"

A. The Time Gap. Very little of a time gap occurs, in that the Colonel's suicide happened only a few days prior to the Burton's arrival in the village.

B.  The Ominous Event.  The event in this case is the suicide of Colonel Appleton.  True to form, this was a catalyzing event that everyone in the village was talking about, and it was something that provoked even more gossip and rumor.  Of course, it also created an atmosphere that fostered a double murder.

C. The Obscure Relationship.

D. The Convoluted Will. 

E.  The House.  Jerry and Joanna Burton come to the village to stay in a house named "The Furze".  It is an odd name for a house, since a furze is a bush covered entirely by thorns and so is very unpleasant.  Its homonym, 'The Firs" would be a more suitable and expected name for an estate.  I think this was an intentional joke on Christie's part.

 

Questions:

This mystery seems to be lacking in the intricacy and clever plotting for which Christie is so justly famous.  It appears that she has substituted the My Fair Lady romance between Jerry and Megan for her usual plot twists and 11th hour revelations.  

The reader is supposed to be captivated by the many villagers who could be the potential letter writer.  For example, Christie points to Mrs. Barton, who own the house where the book was found from which the letters were cut.  And yet, she completely lacks any motive at all for slandering her neighbors.  The awkward Megan and the gossipy Mrs Symmington are possible suspects as well, but they are eliminated almost immediately by the sympathetic romance and by being murdered.

Ms Griffith is credibly presented as a potential suspect.  For example, she could have poisoned the sedatives that she prepared for the murder victim, and she is given a motive, albeit a weak one, in that she supposedly loved Mr Symmington.  However, the motive is never developed, since we never see her and Mr Symmington together for any meaningful exchange of feelings.  And her interactions are muddled by those a of a similar character, Mrs Guch, Mr Symmington's secretary who seems equally devoted to him, and interacts with him every day.  

The other problem of plotting is that Mr Symmington, the murderer, is presented as having concocted the plot for a pre-meditated murder months in advance, typing addresses on letters and then donating the typewriter to the Women's Institute, but then when there is the slightest question about what Maid Agnes saw on her day off, he resorts to a brutal blow to the back of the head and stuffing her in a closet. When the first complication arises, he has no contingency plan in place. And it is this murder that convicts him more than the one he really needed.  We should have expected that the coldly calculating solicitor would have more presence of mind than that.  

Mr Symmington's motive is, perhaps, the least satisfying of any the possible suspects.  A young nanny has come to take care of his boys and he has no other thought than to murder his wife, the mother of his children, and then attempt some sort of romance with her.  What did he expect would have been the outcome of such a dalliance, since he had no indications of any sort of reciprocity from poor Elsa herself?  Again, the calculating solicitor becomes the foolish romantic and also maniacal lunatic with no other character development to justify it.   

Agatha Christie: Sleeping Murder (Geraldine McEwan)

The Setup

Gwenda Halliday, born in India to English parents but now an orphan, is traveling to England for the first time to set up a house for her wealthy fiance who has remained behind in India.  She is met at the dock by Hugh Hornbeam, an employee of her fiance's company, who accompanies her throughout the story.  Gwenda, guided by "instinct," travels to Dillmouth and buys a house there, Hillside, to begin renovations.  During the process she becomes convinced that she has been in the house before, despite never having traveled to England, and that she witnessed someone being murdered.  Hugh calls in Mrs Marple, and they begin to investigate.

In researching the prior owners of Hillside, Gwenda and Hugh discover that the house was once owned by Kelvin Halliday, Gwenda's father.  For her part, Marple was able to locate Mrs Pagett, the housekeeper at Hillside in 1934, who immediately recognizes "darling Gwynnie" from when she was a little girl.  From there, the details of her father's residence in Dillmouth begin to come out.  Kelvin was involved with a performing troupe called the Funnybones, and fell in love with one of the cast, Helen Marsden.  

The two made arrangements to be married, but when the day came, Helen was absent, apparently having run away to London and sent a postcard not to look for her.  Gwenda's father died shortly after, and she was sent back to India to be raised by an aunt, while the rest of the cast, along with Helen's brother, Dr Kennedy were left to get on with their lives.   However, Gwenda's resurfaced memory of the murder has called into question the official recounting of events.  Miss Marple and the team decide to investigate further.

The team advertised for the housemaid, Lily, who had been present along with Mrs Pagett at Hillside.  She answered the advertisement and was coming to town to tell all she could remember.  She missed the meeting, however, and it was soon discovered that she had been murdered walking along the pathway from the train station.  Clearly, the murderer from all those years ago was still present and active, desperate that nothing more from those events be revealed. 

What Really Happened

The bombshell revelation concerns Gwenda's mother, Claire, who was supposed to have died in a car crash in India, with her devastated father dying only a few years later.  However, we learn that the crash was staged, and her mother was not injured at all.  Instead, she faked her death and immigrated to England with the intention of meeting up with Kelvin Halliday, her husband.  While in England, she changed her name to Helen Marsden and joined the Funnybones cast.  Helen and Claire, Gwenda's mother, were the same person.   

With this level of planning and commitment underway, it is unthinkable that Claire would leave Halliday with nothing more than a postcard.  However, the police handwriting expert examined the card and a note thought to be written by Helen on the back of a photograph given to Dr James Kennedy, her brother.  The expert confirmed that the two writing samples were written by the same hand. 

Further, we learn that Claire/Helen was worried about someone finding out about her.  We all thought it was the strange Indian man seen in town but in reality she was worried about her brother, Dr Kennedy, from whose inappropriate and jealous attentions she had fled years earlier, seeking refuge in India.  Now that she was back in England, Kennedy had tracked her down and was outraged to find that she was soon to be married and pass permanently beyond his control.

It was Dr. Kennedy who strangled Helen at Hillside, while little Gwynnie watched through the banister railing.  Later, he pushed Kelvin Halliday off the cliff to his death. Lily was supposed to be out of the house, it being the maid's day off, but she returned early and observed James around the house that evening.  While she didn't see the actual murder, she would have remembered Kennedy being present and therefore needed to be silenced.

What then of the postcard, confirmed by the police expert to be written by Helen?  In actuality, both the postcard, and the reference sample on the photograph were written by James Kennedy, deliberately to mislead.

 

The Cast of Characters

1.  The Doctor.  Doctor Kennedy, the brother of Helen Marsden and the murderer.

2.  The Energetic Young Woman. Gwenda Halliday, our protagonist.  Undaunted in the face of coming to England for the first time, after having lived all her life in India.  Facing the task of traveling, buying a house and setting it up, and then solving the murder of her own parents.

Interestingly, the same role is played by Gwenda's mother, Claire Halliday, who took much the same trip as her daughter, preceding her husband to England from India. 

3.  The Batty Eccentric.  Many of the Funnybones cast are presented as picturesque, but in particular Evie Ballentyne, with her tap-dancing xylophone performance and drug habit is an example.

6.  The Housekeeper.  Mrs Pagett is the obvious choice, not only housekeeper and cook for Kelvin Hallady in the earlier time, but also for Gwenda, 18 years later

6.5.   The Maid.  Lily, the house maid who saw more than she should, even though she didn't know it, and was murdered for her troubles.

7.   The Industrialist.   Gwenda's prospective husband is only tangentially referenced, but he is the classic money bags that is funding her trip to England, paying for the house she buys and arranging for her assistant

8.  The Legal Mind.  The local solicitor, Dickie Fane, steps in to provide the history of the house, Hillside.

10.  The Rake.  Kelvin Halliday sweeps into Dillmouth and commands the presence of the public beauty, Helen Marsden.  In this case, it is carefully subverted because Halliday is already married to Helen.

In the same vein, the members of the performing cast are described as a complicated web of overlapping relationships, with dubious parentage.  Dickie Fane was having a relationship with Janet Erskine and fathered a son, despite her being married to Richard Erskine. 

11. The Rival.  The aforementioned Richard Erskine

12.  The Daughter. Gwynnie.  Gwenda when she was a little girl and whom Mrs Pagett remembered.  The early part of the story is full of Gwenda's memories of the house when she was young.  It was Gwynnie who lived in the nursery, saw the cornflower wallpaper, went through the boarded up door, and observed the murder through the banister railing and not over it.

15.  The Dubious Man from India - The Overseas Connection.   The man from India is seen in town the night Helen Marsden is murdered.  True to form, Claire is running from an unfortunate past.  He has come to track her down as a potential thief of certain jewels that Helen had stolen.

20. The Shopkeeper.  Miss Marple begins her investigation in the crafting shop where she buys wool for knitting and inquires about the "girls in service" at the old Hillside manor.  This shopkeeper remembered that time and Mrs Pagett, who was the former housekeeper.  As usual, the shopkeeper is an invaluable source of information about the people of the town.

21. The Mirror  Helen Marsden and Claire Halliday are mirrors of each other, until it is revealed that they are the same person.  Similarly, Gwenda Halliday and Claire Halliday are mirrors of each other having similarly adventurous lives, orphaned and independent pasts, pioneer trips to England from India, preceding their husbands

22.  The Policeman.   Miss Marple finds the protection of Chief Inspector Arthur Primer who is in charge of the actual investigation.

Tropes

A. The Time Gap.  A classic time gap of 18 years divided between when Gwenda was a little girl, and now a mature young woman

B.  The Ominous Event.  The time when Helen was murdered, Kelvin Halliday was murdered, and Gwynnie sent away.  The Funnybones also had its last performance and was broken up, with each going their separate ways.

 C. The Obscure Relationship. The obscure relationship is discovered when Helen and Claire are revealed to be the same person.  Therefore, Gwenda is not only the daughter of Claire, but also the daughter of Helen. What's interesting here is that all the stories that Gwenda learned about Helen Marsden were as someone who was simply another woman that her father admired, an uninterested third party.  With the new revelation, Gwenda realizes that all those stories were about her own mother.  Here was an entirely new group of people who knew her mother much better than she did.

E.  The House.  In this case, Hillside plays a key role in bringing the murder out into the light, prompting Helen's memories with its renovation.

 Commentary

This is one of the classic Christie mysteries, with nearly all the components present.  This includes the vital Time Gap and the India Connection.

The story is really told in two modes.  The first includes Gwenda and uncovering her past using clues provided by the house and starting us on the long investigation.  The second is when we spend a lot of time on the Funnybones and the weird eccentricities and romantic connections among the cast; what they all did that night, how absurd they were in their performances, their ambitions and enthusiasms.  

Of the two, I found the shift of focus to the Funnybones to be by far the least interesting.  I didn't care at all about their lives and their struggles.  And in the end, their comings and goings didn't materially contribute to the unfolding of the plot in any way.  It was all an elaborate red herring.  The only thing that really mattered was Helen and Kelvin Halliday and the brother James.  Everything else was set dressing.

 

 

Agatha Christie: They Came to Baghdad

 Summary:

An energetic young woman, Victoria Jones, who is a failed shorthand dictation typist, is fired from her job, but meets a charming young man, Edward, just before he embarks on a trip to Baghdad.  Lacking any ties to London, she vows to follow after him and eventually makes the journey as a companion to Mrs Clipp, a wealthy American.

Once in Iraq, she makes an effort to find her young man, Edward, but instead gets entangled with a British intelligence officer, Mr. Dakin, who explains about powerful international forces at work to prevent a lasting peace in this post-WWII world.  Dakin tells her of two great men who have uncovered evidence of these evil forces.  Each are bringing some evidence of their activities to a peace conference in Baghdad.

That night, one of these great men, Carmichael appears at Victoria's hotel door, asking for a place to hide.  She bundles him under the blankets while the police search the room, but when she returns to him, he is already dead from a stab wound to the heart.  The other great man is Sir Rupert, a traveler of the Middle East and throughout the former British empire.  He is staying at the same hotel as Victoria.

While Victoria and Edward go sightseeing in the ancient city of Babylon, Edward urges Victoria to make friends with his former girlfriend, Catherine. Catherine takes Victoria to have her hair washed, but while at the salon, Victoria is attacked with chloroform and kidnapped.  She awakens to find herself a prisoner in a desolate Iraqi village in the middle of the desert.  She escapes her unsophisticated captors and instead finds refuge in a nearby archaeological dig run by two Englishmen.  Victoria stays with them while she recovers from her ordeal, and becomes special friends with Richard, the younger of the two academics.

There are  three fundamental issues with this story as Agatha tells it, and then a few ongoing problems.

The first is the sheer impossibility and absurdity of  the plot.  The forced coincidences and improbably outcomes that could only be attributed to the hand of the author.

Second, the espionage side of the story seems inadequately told.  For example, we spend great amounts of time and paragraphs describing how amazing are the three great men that wend their way toward this auspicious meeting in Baghdad.  Each is described as a powerful force of nature. Carmichael is the  Arab among Arabs, a man who can go anywhere, do anything, all unseen and fit into the local culture seamlessly.  He is compared to Lawrence of Arabia.   Sir Rupert strides the globe; no country, no continent barred to him.  He is at home among the heights of the Himalayas or among the farthest reaches of the dark continent. Doctor Livingstone pales in comparison. And finally, Mr Dakin is the most consummate British spymaster that he makes George Smiley a mere amateur. He operates the British intelligence service in the shadows behind the mask of a shabby civil servant.

Both of the first two men are dead within hours of our meeting them.  And master spy Dakin is powerless to prevent either of their demises.  Looked at objectively, Dakin is an utter failure.  We spend so much time building them up, but have nothing for them to do once they arrive.

In fact, most of the book sees very little action.  Nothing of any consequence to the plot actually takes place for pages and pages.  And when something does happen, such as when Victoria finds a thrilling escape from her captors in the remote desert village, walks all night and seeks shelter on the lee side of a Tell, she immediately tumbles into the refuge of the archaeologists and carries on as if nothing had happened after only escaping a few miles away.  The entire kidnapping and imprisonment plot seemed nothing more than a deus ex machina to get Victoria to meet Richard.

Further, the entire action of the plot focuses on the great men bringing proof of the evil organization to the conference and so to expose them to the world.  Victoria and Richard are successful in uncovering what that proof is, in the form of a knotted scarf and a leaf of notepaper.  But when the moment comes to unravel these two clues and obtain the proof, all that happens off-stage while Victoria is asleep.  She wakes up to find that quite a lot has happened in her absence for which she simply wasn't needed.  In fact, if she had been alert at the initial meeting, she could have handed the scarf over to Dakin on the night of Carmichael's murder and the entire second half of the book would have been unnecessary.

A mere aside, here, is that Agatha Christie occasionally wanders off into banal descriptions of the countryside, giving extended narratives of Baghdad street life, or shopping at the market, or wandering the copper bazaar.  She takes us on trips to the ancient ruins of Babylon, or a lushly planted grove of trees, or of her awkward attempt to walk around the edges of a river bay, but she makes very little effort to integrate them into the story she is telling.  The copper market has no bearing on the story at all;  nothing of interest happens there.  We can tell that these passages are the result of Christie having actually visited those places on her various travels in the Middle East, but that is not enough to merit their inclusion in her adventure novel.

Finally, Victoria herself comes across as actually a very unlikable character. 

By her own admission, she is a very poor employee, who is very bad at shorthand dictation, can't type and is an even worse speller.  What's more, she wastes time, disrupts the office with her stories and makes fun of the boss and the boss's wife behind his back.  Frankly, her firing from her job is well deserved and she admits as much.  

However when she returns to her employment agency, in order to cover up her failure she outright suggests that her boss sexually harassed her at the office.  Not only is this a complete lie, but she has savagely ruined his reputation at the employment agency, all for her spur of the moment joke to save face.  It was here that the reader began to get the impression that Victoria could be a rather nasty piece of work.

Next, she finds a elder lady traveling exactly where she wants to go, and so she lies outrageously to get an undeserved position.  Further, she hasn't been in her company for 10 minutes before she's complaining about how much of a chatterbox Mrs Clipp is and how unpleasant it is to be around her.

After having met the young man in the park on her lunch break for all of 10 minutes, she then proceeds to chase halfway round the world after him.  Then, on the strength of a 10-minute conversation in the park, she turns up in Baghdad to find that Edward has no real interest in her, and in fact already has a girlfriend, Catherine.

She immediately demands that he drop Catherine and take up with her, for no particular reason other than that she is a good English girl, and Catherine is from Iran.  Her jealous impulses are strong and immediate.  Then she demands that Edward find her a job.  Next she conspires to cheat the owner of her hotel out of paying for her meals and lodging.  In the end, she actually dodges out on the bill, which we never see her pay, and in fact later borrows money from the same hotelier with brazen impunity, completely willing to trade her time so that the hotel manager will buy her drinks.  At this point she is beginning to appear like a dance hall hostess.

 

British TV: Two models

 Enduring British Television seems to revolve around two main formulae:

First.  The principal character is an unusual hero, intellectually brilliant, physically outstanding, often with even more unusual characteristics.  They could even be supernatural in some way.   As an accompanying trait, however, they are often perceived as callous, unthinking or uncaring.  Their towering intellect makes them appear to dismiss those around them, trampling on their feelings, and appearing to discard them when they outlive their usefulness.  Sometimes verbally disparaging those of lesser acumen. 

Often their schemes seem so far fetched and unlikely to those around them that they are viewed as eccentric, but this is because they don't feel the need to fully explain what their plans are.

It is this tension between their hyper competence and their social struggles that endears them to the audience.  However, these traits often cause them to lead solitary lives, accompanied by a single companion who has grown to truly understand and tolerate the struggles of their genius.

Classic examples are Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, the Doctor (Who), James Herriot, Ford Prefect (hitchhiker's guide), Father Brown, Death in Paradise, Hercule Poirot, Peter Wimsey

 

Second.  Any zany absurdist comedy.  

Are You Being Served?, The Young Ones, Monty Python, Couplings,

Agatha Christie: Mrs. McGinty's Dead

 Poirot is drawn to a case of the murder of a poor housekeeper who was apparently murdered by her lodger, and the young man was subsequently sentenced to death for it.  However, even at the 11th hour, Poirot begins to investigate.

 Summary

Mrs. McGinty is a cleaning woman, what Christie calls a "charwoman" where she cleans wealthy people's houses.  She was fond of looking at the photos in the Sunday Comet newspaper and one week read a story commenting on two local women who ran into problems 30 years previously and had to leave the area because of the scandal.  

Mrs. McGinty recognized one of the photos from one of her houses and began talking about it when she was doing her regular rounds.  One of the people who overheard her was going to be implicated in the scandal if it was all brought up again, and so murdered Mrs. McGinty to keep her from talking. 

There were two photos in the paper.   

Lily Gamboll, as a young girl of 10, desperately poor and abandoned in a London slum, was given to be cared for by her aunt.  In a fit of rage she hit her elderly relative in the head with an butcher knife, and she eventually died.  The girl was sent to a reformatory boarding school.Eventually, Poirot decides that Lily is not involved in the present case.

Eva Kane was involved in a murder scandal.  As a 19 year old, she falls in love with a married man, Alfred Craig.  Somehow, Craig's current wife is murdered, Craig is convicted of it and Eva fled to Australia, pregnant with her first child.  There is a strong suspicion that Eva herself was involved in the poisoning, and that she had a narrow escape from the gallows. She changes her name to Eva Hope, delivers her baby, a son, and names him Evelyn Hope after herself.  The story is a little vague, at this point, but it is suggested that the young Eva cannot take care of her new son and gives it up for adoption at some point.

Later, this same son migrates back to England and takes to the stage as an actor and playwright.  During this era, he finds a wealthy woman, Laura Upward, to be his patron on the stage.  As he draws closer to her, he changes his name to match hers, Robin Upward, and adopts the role of her son.  The Upwards come to live in Bellhinney, and Robin has a successful career with his theater company.  The relationship is progressing and Robin is in line to be the sole heir in Mrs Upward's will

It is at this point that Mrs McGinty sees the photo in the paper of Eva Kane and recognizes it as one she came across while cleaning houses.  She buys ink and paper and talks about writing to the newspaper about having more information.  At this Robin Upward cannot risk that Laura Upward will find out about his scandalous past, and his mother who was suspected of being a murderess, because she is likely to terminate the relationship.  No more sponsoring of plays, and no more inheritance.  And so he kills Mrs McGinty. 

Poirot breezes into town to investigate and stirs up the local upper crust.  Each of them has minor secrets from their past but Poirot focuses on McGinty, and at a party of the Crust, he produces the two photos from the newspaper.  Mrs Upward says she recognizes one of them, and Poirot urges her to tell him all that she knows, because she will now be in danger.  She remains silent to Poirot.

However, Robin Upward (nee Evelyn Hope) is aware that she has learned something and fears the termination of their relationship.  While Ariadne Oliver waits outside in the car, Robin kills Laura Upward and then drives away to establish his alibi.  At the intermission of the play, he  pretends to make a solitious phone call to his "mother" but really calls three of the women from the village asking, as Laura, if they would come over for coffee.  Mrs Summerhays responds, and actually shows up at Laura's house but cannot get an answer to her knock, so she goes away again.  While on the premises, however, she gets a glimpse of the retreating figure of a young woman.

At this stage, Poirot is back at his lodgings, now accompanied by Robin Upward, and comes across the original of the mysterious photo in the newspaper.  Because it is found in a drawer that he had previously searched, he knew it must have been recently planted there, and the only possible source was Robin.  Therefore, he knew that Robin must be the murderer, and once confronted, Robin confesses.

As James Bentley is released from jail, and from his execution sentence, Poirot is waiting outside with his companion, Maude Williams.  He confronts her with the theory that Maude was the woman seen running away from the Upwards house on the night of the murder.  She admits that it was, and confesses that she is the child of the woman that Eva Kane poisoned and whose father was hanged for it.  She suspected that Laura Upward was actually Eva Kane, returned to the village, and she intended to kill her in revenge.  However, when she arrived at the house, Laura had already been murdered and so she went away.

 

 

1.  The Doctor.  Dr. Rendell, who employs both a housekeeper and Mrs McGinty "for scrubbing floors."  His wife, Shelagh, is presented as being of the right age to be the child of Eva Kane.

2.  The Energetic Young Woman.  Maude Williams is the friend of the accused young man, James Bentley.  She works in a real estate office in a neighboring town.

3.  The Batty Eccentric.  Maureen Summerhays "It's the ministry of Agriculture form about the bloody pig."  She is a poor cook, terribly disorganized, and generally not a very perceptive person.  Geese fly in and out of her kitchen.  She is also presented as drinking too much

3.5 The Cloud-headed Girl.  

4.  The Temptrix.   Eve Carpenter used to be an exotic dancer at the Cactus Club in Soho while she was married to a common laborer in impoverished circumstance.  But now is married to an aspiring politician.   "And did you go to Mrs Upward?  Eve:  "Why in the hell should I? Damn dreary old woman"

5.  The Young Specialist.  

6.  The Housekeeper.  

6.5.   The Maid.  Mrs. McGinty herself.  She was a "charwoman" and filled the same role, going in and out of many houses, all secrets reveal to her.  No one questions her presence.  And everyone reports that she was a hard worker.

7.   The Industrialist.  

8.  The Legal Mind.  

9.  The Efficient Professional.  

10.  The Rake.  

11. The Rival.  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

12.  The Daughter. In this story, the daughter is a son.  "Robin is as good as a daughter to me," said Mrs Upward.  The daughter in hiding is Evelyn Hope.

13.  The Vicar.  

14.  The Politician.  Guy Carpenter, running for  Parliament. Looks down on all servants.  "Who has a great sense of his own importance."

15.  The Overseas Connection.   Maureen and John Somerhays have been away for many years in India. Miss Sweetiman grew up "abroad, never you mind where."  Mrs. Upward fled to Australia and then has returned more recently.

21. The Mirror  Poirot points out that there are three women who are the right age to be the daughter Evelyn Crane.  In the end, Evelyn turns out to be a man.

16.  The Loving/Lonely Wife. 

18.  The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man.  Mrs Upward

19.  The Social Outcast. 

20. The Shopkeeper:   Miss Sweetiman runs the local general store and post office.

21. The Mirror:  Christie draws two overt parallels of her own accord.  She contrasts the accused murderer, James Bentley with Robin Upward, both "tied to their mother's apron strings" and unable to cope on their own.   The mother insulates them from real life.

Second, she says, through Poirot, that there are three women in the village of the right age to be Eva's daughter.  

22.  The Policeman.   Poirot is called in by a Chief Superintendent Spence, a friend of his who is having second thoughts about the outcome of the case.

Tropes

A.  The Ominous Event.  

B. The Time Gap.  Mrs McGinty read a newspaper article that showed photographs of women from the past who somehow met tragic ends.  Because of someone or something that she saw in the photographs of that article, McGinty was murdered.  Poirot has to track down the stories of each of these women and find how they relate to the current members of the village.  So Poirot has to investigate now, a murder that took place a year ago, that referenced photographs from 20 (30?) years prior.

 C. The Obscure Relationship. It appears that everyone in this story was given up for adoption.  Everyone has obscure parentage  that no one is really clear on and everyone is trying to hide.

D. The Convoluted Will.   Christie makes a nod toward some kind of inheritance, but dismisses it as completely above board.  Bessie Burch inherited the house from her aunt, Mrs. McGinty, when she was murdered. 

Questions:

Near the beginning, Poirot says that the only person who could be Eva Kane is Mrs Upward, which would make Robin Upward the obvious suspect to save his mother's reputation.  Poirot dismisses Robin Upward, saying that he would simply only use the publicity for one of his plays.  And yet, it really was Robin Upward who was the murderer, and instead of welcoming the publicity, avoiding scandal was offered as the reason he wanted to keep things secret.  The reason this is not fair is that we have come to rely on Poirot's judgement when it comes to human nature.  Here, he was just completely wrong, with no explanation offered.

The timeline doesn't quite work out.  Eva Kane was pregnant with the child when she fled to Australia.  Therefore Poirot tells us, that child must be 30 years old now.  Since Eva was 19 when she fled, she must now only be in her 50s, not an elderly lady who is wracked with arthritis, confined to a wheelchair, as was presented in the story.  Poirot states that Eva Kane would be over 60, a simple error in the facts.

Similarly, Maude Williams is the child of the woman that Eva Kane was supposed to have poisoned in order to marry Arthur Craig.  Since she was older than an infant at the time, she was probably 5 or 6.  That puts her nearly in her 40s. At that time, her mother was murdered, her father was executed She now has a crush on the accused James Bentley, who is compared in age to Robin, and so about 30.  Therefore we have a relatively young man who is being paired up with a woman 10 years older than he is, probably past the age for starting a family, and this is presented as a perfect romantic couple, a match made in heaven.

 Poirot says that Shelagh Rendell, the doctor's wife, is afraid of something, but he cannot discover what.  In fact, we go the entire show without discovering what it is.   Similarly, Poirot is convinced that there are skeletons in Eve Carpenter's closet, but we never find out what they are, beyond the fact that she used to be a dancer at a Soho night club. 

At the halfway point, we see Poirot almost pushed onto the tracks at the train station.  He is pleased that someone tried to murder him, because it means that he is getting close to something.  However, whatever the motive, it had nothing to do with the murder, and instead was done by Mrs Rendell.   Poirot's elation that he was getting close is actually another error in judgement.

 

Agatha Christie: Halloween Party

 Ariadne Oliver is at a Halloween party in a local village, Woodleigh Commons, when the horrifying happens and one of the children is found murdered.  Oliver brings in Poirot to investigate.  Judith Butler is Ariadne's friend, and she has a daughter Miranda.  The party takes place in the manor house, called Apple Trees, owned by the local matriarch, Mrs Drake, who is widowed.  Miranda's best friend is Joyce Reynolds, about 14 years old, who isn't well liked and notorious for telling stories.   At the party, Joyce boasts that she had seen a murder committed once years ago.  Later, this same Joyce is found drowned by the apple bobbing tub.

While the police dismiss it as a random stranger, Mrs Oliver is convinced that the murder is related to that earlier statement about witnessing a murder.  This is what she brings to Poirot.  Joyce has an older brother, Leopold and lives with her mother Mrs Reynolds.   Leopold in particular is presented as a strange young man.  In addition to the other children, there is also a gardener named Michael Garfield, who works on a celebrated garden in the area and he himself is a famous landscape architect.

Poirot picks up the thread of the witnessed murder, and in speaking to the village witch, learns that there have been three murders that have happened in the village in the past 5 years that could possibly fit the description of something that a child could have witnessed.  The result was three possibilities:  Olga, the Au pair from Czechoslovakia, Lesley Ferrier, a lawyer's apprentice clerk, and Brenda who was the companion of the church organist.  

 Ariadne Oliver remembers that during the party, she had come across Mrs. Drake, who had seemed startled and had dropped a vase of flowers and shattered it, splashing water everywhere.

Eventually, Poirot dismisses the death of Brenda as being a true suicide, when the organist reveals that the two of them were lovers, and Brenda left a suicide note which she concealed.  However, an additional murder occurs, that of the brother Leopold. 

In the end, Poirot reveals that first, it was Rowena Drake with her lover Michael Garfield who murdered Rowena's husband by running him over with a car.  Then, Rowena poisoned Madame Llewellen-Smythe so that her fortune would come to Rowena.  But instead, the old lady suspected something and changed her will to leave everything to Olga the companion.  However, Rowena hired Leslie Ferrier to create a forged copy of the changed will so that the forgery would be detected and discredited.  However, Leslie kept the original copy, and began blackmailing Rowena, so she murdered him.  

In the mean time, the last piece of the puzzle, the loose end is Olga Seminoff.  Rowena murders her as well, and gives the body to Michael Garfield to dispose of in his garden.  This burying of the body is what Miranda observes, but keeps a secret for many years, until she shares it with Joyce Reynolds.  When Joyce blurts it out for attention at Rowena's own party, she can't take a chance, and murders Joyce.

While she thinks herself safe, Joyce's brother Leopold saw the two of them, Joyce and Rowena, go into the library and Leopold confronts Rowena.  She appears to buy him off with a new watch, but eventually Rowena must kill him too, drowning him in the lake.  This brings the total deaths for which she was responsible to six.  

Eventually, Michael tried to finish what he had started with Olga, to silence the only witness to her murder.  Without Miranda's testimony, there was nothing tying him to any of the crimes, which could all be lain at the feet of Rowena.  So he lured Miranda, his daughter, to the garden and tried to poison her, until Poirot intervened and he was arrested by the police.

 

1.  The Doctor.  

2.  The Energetic Young Woman. Judith Butler, the mother of Miranda, is presented as a single young mother who is out to find the best for her daughter.

 3.  The Cloud-headed Girl.  Edmund is presented as an odd child.  Once he jokes that others say he is overcome with morbid fascination.  His mother degrades him by saying that there is no longer a man about the house.  Rather than being unpleasant, however, Edmund seem more to struggle to understand his place in the family and in the village.  Whereas Frankie was striving to become an adult, through all the wrong means, Edmund was holding on to childish philosophies.  He is dominated and henpecked by both Frankie and his mother

4.  The Temptrix.  There is some effort to make Frankie Drake into an early temptrix, but it is mild.  She smokes and drinks, and has boyfriends, and certainly she was passionate about her crush on Leslie Farrier, before her mother ended it.   But she doesn't seem to be twistedly manipulative in the way that the true temptress must be.  If she had remained under the influence of her mother, she would have turned into one, but we get the sense that she has been given a chance to choose another path.

5.  The Young Specialist.  The young scientist in this case is Michael Garfield, who, despite being the murder and an amoral predator is also apparently a wizard with constructing a garden.

6.  The Housekeeper.

6.5.   The Maid.  

7.   The Industrialist. 

8.  The Legal Mind.  The solicitor, Mr. Fullerton, spends considerable time explaining and exploring the will of old Mrs. Llewellen-Smythe and Olga, as well as the details of his clerk, Lesley 

9.  The Efficient Professional.  The law clerk Lesley Ferrier was a competent professional, "He had his points, handled clients well." 

10.  The Rake.  Michael Garfield is presented as the sequential philanderer, flirting with Frankie, seducing the young Mrs. Drake for her money, but also Judith Butler 14 years ago to father Miranda, and at the end is seducing Miranda herself into committing suicide, unsuccessfully as it turns out.

11. The Rival.  In this story, Joyce is the rival for Miranda's beautiful Daughter persona.  Both girls are about the same age; neither has a father; both are living in slightly constrained circumstances.   While Miranda is the first born and the apple of her mother's eye, Joyce is the second child and struggles for attention against the backdrop of the village.  Joyce competes with Miranda by stealing her story and telling it as her own.  Both are the victims of a murder attempt.  But while Joyce is remembered with annoyance, Miranda is pictured as the fragile and tragic hero in a gothic horror novel.  And Joyce, as a true Rival, is not quite as lovely, not quite as charming, not quite as pleasant to be around.

12.  The Daughter.  Joyce and Miranda are both candidates here, (in a story full of children).  But it is Miranda who is presented as an angel, and has personal moments with Poirot and Ariadne.  Typically, it is the Daughter who meets a tragic end, as Miranda almost does in the last act, but is saved through Poirot's heroic intervention.

13.  The Vicar.  The vicar, Reverend Cottrell, in this story arranges for impoverished girls from Old Europe (Czechoslovakia) to work in Britain as maids and become exposed to a modern society.  Olga is one of these.  The vicar seems to be constantly muttering about not having enough money, but it doesn't seem to add anything to the story.

14.  The Politician.  

15.  The Overseas Connection. Olga, from the Czech republic, is considered an Outsider.  She is a foreigner and not truly one of the village.  The comment is made several times, even to Poirot, who is also a foreigner.  As such she is not trusted, not treated with respect, and very little effort is made to find her after she disappears.  When she is cheated out of her inheritance, no one stands up for her. Poirot remarks that she is without a friend.   An odd final element is that Garfield has been on a trip to Athens, from which he has only just returned.

16.  The Loving/Lonely Wife. 

17.  The Batty Eccentric.  The village witch makes another appearance as the batty eccentric in the form of Mrs. Goodbody, who everyone dismisses.  Poirot treats her with more respect and receives vital information from her, implying that she can be very lucid when she chooses to be.

18.  The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man.  We only get hints of this character in the form of Old Madam Lewellen-Smythe, who dislikes all her family and leaves her vast fortune in her will to the hired companion, ostensibly turning her own daughter and grandchildren out into the streets.  "She was always snapping at you, Francis."  "She thought you were a sniveling little mommy's boy"

19.  The Social Outcast. 

Tropes

A. The Time Gap.  The time gap was obvious in this one, but not as large.  Poirot goes looking back in the past of the murder victim, which is only about 5 years, since the girl is maybe 13 or 14.  And so we delve into Olga, the au pair, and the clerk, and the old lady - things relatively recent in the village's memory.

B.  The Ominous Event.  Again, Christie gives us a new take on the trope.  The event was a series of murders in the village, all seemingly unrelated and yet all happening relatively close together, giving everyone a feeling of unease.  The old lady died, Olga appeared to have forged the will, leaving everything to herself, and then Olga disappeared and no one knew exactly what happened to her, including her family back in Sweden.  That was the key event that led to everything that happened since that time.

 C. The Obscure Relationship. It turned out that Miranda Butler was actually the daughter of Michael Garfield, who tried to murder her at the climactic ending, her mother having had an affair with Garfield in the pre-gap time.

D. The Convoluted Will.  The old lady Llewellen-Smythe took on a companion from overseas to take care of her in her old age.  When the old lady died, she changed her will to leave everything to Olga, disinheriting her own children, whom she disliked.  In order to discredit that will, the corrupt law clerk produced an obvious forged copy that was instantly rejected and Olga was dismissed in shame. But the truth was that there was a new will, and Olga was favored in it.

 

 

 

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

 

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Synopsis:  Tommy and Tuppence meet with Tommy's Aunt Ada in the Sunny Ridge Nursing home, where Tommy solves crosswords with Ada and Tuppence meets with the local residents.  This includes Mrs Lancaster, who asks cryptic questions about "the poor dead child."  Later, with Tommy out of the country, Tuppence learns that Aunt Ada has died and that Mrs Lancaster was hustled out of the nursing home in the dead of night.  Among Aunt Ada's things, now transferred to Tommy as next of kin, was an unusual painting.  In the back of the painting was a letter written by Aunt Ada, suggesting that something evil was happening at the nursing home, and that Tommy should look for her murderer.  Returning to investigate, Tuppence meets Miss Marple and together they begin to track down the clues present in the painting

They discover that the original painting was altered with a few additions.  They identify the location of the cottage depicted in the painting and meet the local residents who all seem hesitant and evasive when asked about the cottage.  Eventually, the whole story comes out, that a local girl, Lily Waters, was abducted as a small child, and her body was found two weeks later.  A local boy was accused of the abduction and he later hanged himself.  One by one, the clues added to the painting began to makes sense until they began to point to the wife of the local lord who had purchased a manor and was spending his money on the village children.    

What Really Happened 

With Tuppence and Marple on the case, they unravel the mystery that happened 22 years ago, in that Sir Phillip Stark and his wife, Julia, lost a child.  In her grief, the wife of the manor went mad and abducted the missing Lily Waters.  When her husband learned what had happened, using the organizational skills of Nellie Bligh, he packed her off to a nursing home to keep her out of trouble.  However, she couldn't help but ramble on about her past and eventually Aunt Ada began to put the pieces together.  It was then that the mad wife poisoned Ada. 

Nellie, using Stark's car, was the one who picked her up from Sunny Ridge and brought her back to Stark's manor, keeping her out of sight in the children's bungalow that was captured in the painting.  Eventually, the Vicar decided that he could no longer keep quiet and forced a confrontation and confession, while Tuppence used the diversion to go through Nellie's desk at the manor.  What she discovered, however, was the actual presence of Mrs. Lancaster, or Julia Stark.  Julia attempted to poison Tuppence, as she had Ada and Nellie, but Tuppence fought her off and a full confession was extracted.

 

Questions:

Why did Mrs. Lancaster give Ada the painting?  This was the main clue that pointed everyone to the village, Ferrell St. Edmund. And her eventual discovery and guilt.

Who altered the painting with the telltale rope and roses and so forth?

Miss Marple suggests that Mrs. Lancaster added the clues herself.  But if so, then why?  She couldn't bear to live with the secret.

 Was there an actual child behind the fireplace?  Yes, Mrs. Lancaster abducted Rose and kept her at the cottage, but we are never actually shown the fireplace, nor how anyone could have been hidden behind it.

The Cast

The Doctor:  Doctor Waters, the father of Rose and Lily.

The Vicar,  The Reverend Septimus Bligh

The Loving Wife:   Nellie Bligh to the Vicar.  We see her bringing him food, taking care of the church.  Later we learn that Nellie is estranged from Septimus and has become emotionally attached to Phillip Stark.

The Efficient Professional:  Nellie Bligh to Sir Phillip.  It is she who actually arranges for Julia Stark, AKA Mrs. Lancaster, to be kept at Sunny Ridge.

The Energetic Young Woman:  the inn keeper Miss Hannah Beresford.

The Housekeeper; the Matron, Miss Packard, running the Sunny Ridge nursing home. It's tempting to put her as the Nurse, or as the Efficient Professional, because she is both.  But she also functions as the Housekeeper:  familiar with family secrets, sees the private comings and goings of the residents.  And she earns a clean review from Miss Marple.

The Time Gap:  Rose and Lily Waters as children.  The other element is the mysterious family of the Warrenders.  These were the ones who owned the manor house up until the 1920s when they died out, apparently due to inbreeding and genetic defect.  However, the one remaining member of the Warrender family was Julia Warrender, whom Sir Phillip Stark married and she became Julia Stark, now referred to as Mrs Lancaster or Mrs York.

The Ominous Event.  As a child, Lily was abducted in the pre-gap time and she turned up dead after two weeks.  The village pointed the finger at a hapless, slightly inbred young man, who was innocent but eventually hanged himself from the shame. At the same time, the wife of Sir Phillip gave birth to a stillborn child, and later apparently died of grief, not too much later.  The event caused great trouble for the village. It ruined the career of the Vicar for example, and the aspirations of the local lord, Sir Phillip.  People avoided the village due to the notoriety, turning it into an isolated hamlet that Tuppence and Miss Marple have trouble locating even with a map.

The Batty Eccentric.  Mrs. Lancaster, obviously.   We also could point a finger at many of the residents of Sunny Ridge.   And, Alice Perry who goes around dressed up as a witch ever since she did a play at the village hall.  Alice is Amos' mother but also the mother of Job, the simple-minded boy accused of murdering Lily. 

The Industrialist:  Sir Phillip Stark gained immense wealth through mining and came to the village to buy the "manor house".  Having "lost" his wife and child he is involved with the village in other ways.

The Daughter:  poor Lily who was killed in the former time.  She is the classic young girl who died tragically, which cast a shadow over the village for over 20 years.

 The Legal mind:  the shady solicitor whom Nellie and Stark employ to handle the financial arrangements of Mrs Lancaster's bills. 

The Rake:  the American serviceman, Chris Murphy, who has won the heart of the local darling, Rose Waters (and gotten her pregnant). 

The Rival:  the local bobby, Ethan.

The Temptrix:  Rose Waters, who became pregnant with the American and is now enticing the Constable to marry her to take care of her baby, though Ethan does not know she is pregnant.

The Overseas Connection:  While a resident in Sunny Ridge, Mrs Lancaster was taken away in the dead of night by her relatives from "Africa", Mr and Mrs Johnson.  In actuality, there were no relatives in Africa, it was all an elaborate fiction concocted by Sir Philip and Nellie and the Solicitor.  However, the explanation is presented as completely believable and commonplace.